Reply #32: The answer to your question.....

[A HERETIC I AM]

"don't you long for the days when you could actually get some sort of handle on how much money there actually was in the economy?"

You know Thom, I never really saw the need for being made aware of that figure as it never had any effect on any investing decisions I have mde. I suppose it is certainly useful to some, it just never was to me.

An awful lot of hay has been on DU over the years about the fact that the M3 is no longer published and that haystack leans toward the conspiratorial side (not suggesting that is YOUR lean). Silly me, I am inclined to take their word for it, and the reason is, because the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank is not populated by Conspiracy minded DU'rs.

M3 does not appear to convey any additional information about economic activity that is not already embodied in M2 and has not played a role in the monetary policy process for many years. Consequently, the Board judged that the costs of collecting the underlying data and publishing M3 outweigh the benefits.

From; http://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/h6/discm3.htm